Google's Go: an open-source language

Google has never been afraid to invent new technologies where it feels traditional systems are lacking, and never has this been so obvious as with the announcement of the company's entirely new programming language.

According to an article over on ExtremeTech, the new language - dubbed 'Go' - came about when the company decided that it needed a streamlined, simple method for creating servers and other projects for internal use. While designed for Google's own use, the language is made available under an open-source licence - meaning it's free for anyone to implement for any purpose whatsoever.

The official website - which itself runs on a webserver written in Go - explains that the language is designed to be simple, fast, and combine the advantages of interpreted - where the code is run as required - and compiled - where the code is changed into a directly executable format - languages. With designed-in support for multithreaded systems, a robust garbage collection system, and an impressively fast compiler, it's a language which is certain to interest quite a few in the programming community.

Indeed, the speed is likely to be the biggest attraction for many: a video introduction to the system demonstrates around a thousand lines of Go code compiling in around two hundred milliseconds on an average desktop machine - making testing out changes a lot less painful than with a traditional compiled language.

For those interested in trying out Go, Google has a tutorial section on the official site, along with a not-inconsiderable amount of sample code for playing around with.

Do you believe that Google's Go could represent the future of programming, or is it likely to be nothing more than a neat diversion for those who find true object oriented systems a little confusing? Share your thoughts over in the forums.